Apple Slashes HomePod Orders as Early Sales Prove Lackluster

Apple has slashed orders of HomePod with suppliers after the smart speaker failed to make an impact in the market, according to Bloomberg.

The iPhone maker reportedly last month lowered its sales forecasts and cut some orders with Inventec Inc, a company which manufactures the device for it.

Powered by Apple’s virtual assistant Siri, HomePod went on sale in US, UK and Australia in January, a month after it was promised to be made available for purchase.

Strong pre-orders and early sale figures suggested that HomePod would claim a fair share in the smart speaker market and pose a threat to the dominance of Amazon’s Echo.

HomePod managed to capture only 10 percent share of the global smart speaker market in first ten weeks after going on sale

The device accounted for 75 percent of the smart speakers’ sales in the U.S in the last week of January but failed to maintain the momentum and managed to capture only 10 percent share of the global market in first ten weeks after going on sale, according to Slice Intelligence.

In the same period, Amazon Echo accounted for 73 percent of the all smart speaker sales to the end users while Google HomePod claimed 14 percent market share, the report said.

HomePod’s sales have apparently slowed down by a whopping $349 price tag, its inability to natively support music services other than Apple Music, and lack of promised features like stereo pairing to pair two HomePods together.

Another factor of Apple HomePod’s lacklustre start was its missed December release date, which meant it wasn’t available for purchase when during the holiday shopping season, when the smart speakers were high in demand, Bloomberg pointed out.

However, despite a slow start, Apple is optimistic to boost the sales of HomePod by making some improvements its software and hardware.

In February, Loup Ventures analyst Gene Munster, had said he expects HomePod sales to gather the pace towards the end of 2018.

He predicted that a total of 7 million units of Apple’s HomePods would be sold out this year and the figure will increase to 10.9 million by the end of 2019.